“You are first a migrant”: The role of police procedural injustice and social identity among Nigerian immigrants in the United States

Abstract

Process-based policing represents a strategy for building productive relationships between the police and residents. This study used data from in-depth qualitative interviews with Nigerian immigrants living in a large city to gauge the potential utility of this strategy. Although participants expected the police to behave in a manner consistent with an idealized image of the United States, police contacts were typically characterized as procedurally unfair, which negatively affected their social identity, their support for the police, and their willingness to comply and cooperate. Participants indicated that such treatment signaled to them that the police considered migrants an outgroup whose members represented a threat to public order and required higher levels of social control. Nevertheless, the evidence suggested that procedurally just tactics may prove effective over time, which could help immigrants identify with the police, support them, and report crimes.

Keywords

Immigration legitimacy migration procedural justice process-based model

Introduction

Local residents are the “eyes and ears” of the police in the community (Pryce, 2014; Skogan, 1984). The police rely on them to report crimes and suspicious behavior that threatens public order. Research suggests that to foster this call to duty, police departments should endeavor to build healthy relationships with neighborhood inhabitants (Cordner, 1997; Reisig, 2010). Policing researchers have responded by studying citizens’ perceptions of the police across various social groups in the United States (Bridenball and Jesilow, 2008; Frank et al., 2005; Hurst et al., 2000). By incorporating evidence-based strategies for developing partnerships with community members into their training programs, many police departments have demonstrated their commitment to building meaningful relationships with local residents.

Despite such efforts, challenges persist in establishing strong police–community relationships. One potential challenge is immigration, which can bring about visible demographic changes that impact policing (Mercer, 1995; Skogan, 2005). An area that has received little attention in the policing literature is the relationships between African immigrants and the police in the United States. The recent and expected increase in immigrant populations over the next four decades (Camarota, 2007; Radford and Noe-Bustamante, 2019) has brought the subject of police–immigrant relationships to the forefront. A question for policing researchers is how relationships that promote voluntary cooperation to help the police fight crime and disorder can best be developed with African immigrants.

Strategies for how to effectively improve police–citizen relationships have emerged over the past three decades. One such strategy—widely known as the process-based model of policing—involves the application of procedurally-just tactics during police–citizen encounters (Tyler and Huo, 2002). Police processes and tactics are traditionally said to be procedurally just when they embody four principles: trustworthy motives, dignity and respect, fairness and neutrality, and voice (Jonathan-Zamir et al., 2015). Extant research demonstrates that procedural justice judgments by residents are positively related to police legitimacy, which subsequently promotes the willingness to cooperate with the police (Bolger and Walters, 2019). Many of the studies testing the influence of procedural justice in the United States include samples largely consisting of American-born citizens. Individuals coming to the United States from African countries and members of other immigrant groups are rarely the focus.

This study explores the potential utility of process-based policing as a strategy for building healthy relationships between the police and African immigrants in the United States. Justification for this study is twofold: first, police–citizen relations are especially strained in African immigrant communities (Davies and Fagan, 2012; Pryce, 2014), suggesting traditional policing practices have fallen short. Second, whether procedurally-just tactics are as effective within African immigrant communities as they are in other residential settings remains an open empirical question (Tankebe, 2009). This study uses survey data from in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with Nigerian immigrants to help determine whether procedurally just policing can help build positive relationships in African immigrant communities.

Prior theory and research

The number of immigrants in Western countries has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Accordingly, it is not surprising that immigrant relationships with the police have become a growing field of inquiry (Mercer, 1995). Research on police–immigrant relations shows mixed results. For example, Van Craen (2012) found that Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in Belgium held negative perceptions of police due to concerns over unfair police decision-making and treatment. In Australia, immigrants perceived the police not as protectors or safety guarantors, but rather state agents who viewed them as suspicious and deserving of control (Weber, 2013; see also Murphy and Cherney, 2011). Similar observations have been reported in the United Kingdom (Bradford et al., 2017). But not all of the research points to negative views of the police. For instance, Heath et al. (2013) found that levels of trust were similar for native-born citizens and first-generation immigrants in the United Kingdom (see also Röder and Mühlau, 2012). These studies indicate that immigrants’ views toward the police vary, but that concerns over police decision-making and treatment are relatively common across studies.

The process-based model of policing

Steeped in the pioneering work of Thibaut and Walker (1975), Tyler and Lind (1992) advanced the concept of procedural justice by developing a relational model that hinges on the interpersonal interaction between individuals and authority figures. Procedural justice is a central concept in process-based policing. In its simplest form, procedural justice consists of two elements: quality of interpersonal treatment and quality of decision-making processes. Quality of interpersonal treatment entails treating people with respect and dignity (e.g. adherence to politeness norms) and quality of decision-making refers to decisions that are based on facts (i.e. demonstrating neutrality), involving citizen participation (i.e. allowing voice), and providing explanations for decisions (i.e. establishing that motives are trustworthy). Research shows that such fairness judgments greatly influence perceptions of police legitimacy (Reisig et al., 2007; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). In addition, research also demonstrates that people typically place more weight on fair police processes than whether their encounter with the police resulted in an outcome that was personally favorable (Reisig et al., 2018; Tyler and Huo, 2002).

Procedurally fair treatment by the police acts to signal citizens that they are valued members of the group represented by the police (e.g. the State). Put differently, fair police processes affirm in-group membership and recognize citizens’ relational status within the group (Tyler and Lind, 1992). Individuals who are treated fairly by the police are not only more likely to identify with them, but they are also more likely to view the police as legitimate (Blount-Hill, 2019; Bradford, 2014; Wolfe and McLean, 2021). Legitimacy is the “belief that authorities, institutions, and social arrangements are appropriate, proper and just” (Tyler, 2006: 376). Thus, police legitimacy reflects the belief people have in police authority as deserving voluntary compliance. Although the concept can take many different operational forms (Beetham, 1991; Boateng, 2018b; Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012; Pósch et al., 2021; Trinkner, 2019; Tyler and Jackson, 2014), it is a central concept in the process-based model of policing and is espoused to promote several outcomes, such as cooperating with the police (e.g. calling to report a crime). However, individual judgments of other aspects of policing (known as instrumental factors) have also been found to be influential in driving police legitimacy (Huq et al., 2017).

Instrumental judgments are unique from procedural justice in that they do not develop normatively; they are triggered by individual assessments of creating credible sanctioning threats for those who break rules (termed “sanction risk”), controlling crime and maintaining order (termed “police effectiveness”), and fairly distributing police services across people and communities (termed “distributive fairness”) (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). Although the process-based model posits that the influence of procedural justice judgments on police legitimacy is greater relative to instrumental factors, research on the subject provides some indication that this proposition does not always hold (Trinkner et al., 2020). For example, one recent study found that the relationship between distributive justice and police legitimacy was comparatively stronger in high-risk neighborhoods that experienced higher rates of crime and disorder. In low-risk neighborhoods, procedural justice judgments were more highly correlated with police legitimacy. The authors argue that residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods are less likely to identify with the police—largely because they believe they have been the recipients of police mistreatment—and therefore place more emphases on instrumental concerns during the legitimation process (Reisig et al., 2021). Similarly, other researchers have found that instrumental factors are highly salient in shaping whether residents help the police fight crime when individuals widely question the legitimacy of the police and feel alienated from them (Tankebe, 2009). This research may prove informative when investigating the utility of process-based policing in immigrant communities located in the United States.

Applying process-based policing to immigrant communities

Living conditions of immigrants vary in their countries of destination. In the United States, African immigrants have traditionally relied on ethnic and cultural networks to guide various choices, including the decision of where to reside (Conzen, 1979). Given that most African immigrants seek economic prosperity, neighborhood cost of living, job availability, and the presence of fellow immigrants are all factors that shape their decision regarding where to live. In the state where the study was conducted, an estimated 13% of the population are immigrants (American Immigration Council, 2020), which ranks in the top 10 among all 50 states in terms of immigrant population size (Krogstad and Keegan, 2014). In the state’s largest city, African immigrant communities tend to be middle-to-low income, comprised of renter-occupied dwellings, and high in residential mobility.

It seems safe to assume that immigrants’ perceptions of the police in the United States are at least partially shaped by their experiences with agents of social control in their country of origin (see, for example, Dunham and Alpert, 1988). Extant literature shows that the Nigerian police are corrupt, brutal, ineffective at fighting crime, and work to protect the interests of powerful elites (Alemika, 1993; Onyeozili, 2005; Wambua, 2015) Akinlabi (2016: 34) argues that “the Nigerian police have come to be a consistently corrupt institution, incorrigibly and unrepentantly allied to its historical colonial antecedents and unresponsive to demands of the current liberal democratic political setting” (also see Akinlabi, 2017). Nigerian citizens typically display low levels of trust in their police. The perceptions of the police expressed by residents of immigrant communities in this study may be confounded by their views of the police in Nigeria. This is an important question, because if immigrants import their unfavorable views of the police in their country of origin, then establishing police legitimacy in the United States may prove to be an uphill battle.

There are other potential challenges associated with implementing process-based policing in immigrant communities. For example, Bradford (2014) argues that people who are ethnically different from the police—or the social groups they represent—may be less interested in fairness because police treatment does not contain information relevant to their identity (see Tyler and Blader, 2003). Therefore, process-based policing may not effectively promote police legitimacy among African immigrants because of the relative low value assigned to fairness in police processes. Consequently, African immigrants’ identification with the police in the United States may have little to do with procedural justice. However, there is reason to believe that this may not be the case when it comes to Nigerian immigrants. For starters, research shows that the effect of police fairness is strong when using racially and ethnically diverse samples (Jackson and Bradford, 2009; Murphy et al., 2021; Tyler, 2005; Tyler and Huo, 2002). It may well be that immigrants, including those born in Africa, view the police as representing the dominant group (the State) and that acceptance is very much desired during police encounters via treatment. African and other immigrant groups may identify with and seek to become part of the dominant group. Put differently, because African immigrants identify with the police—or at least the democratic values the police in the United States are believed to represent—they will respond favorably (e.g. perceive the police to be legitimate) to fair and evenhanded police treatment.

Policing research on immigrants reveals different observations when considering procedural justice and its impacts on perceptions of the police. Although relatively scarce, these studies have found that immigrants focus more on instrumental factors when it comes to the police (Menjívar and Bejarano, 2004; Pryce, 2014). A possible explanation is that immigrants’ perceptions of police in their new countries are significantly influenced by their perceptions of the police in their home countries (Pryce et al., 2017). Yet research on police procedural justice and African immigrants in the United States is quite scarce (see, for example, Chenane et al., 2022; Pryce, 2018). The current study contributes to a small but important body of research by exploring the applicability of process-based policing among Nigerian immigrants, a unique population that constitutes the largest portion of African immigrants in the United States (Anderson, 2017). An in-depth qualitative interview approach is employed. By focusing on real situations while allowing participants to speak for themselves and in their own words, this study confronts possible discrepancies in procedural justice theory and its application in police encounters with Nigerian immigrants. The broader goal of this study is to provide empirical results that will contribute to the development of productive relationships between African-immigrant communities and the police.

Methodology

Procedures

This study used data from in-depth qualitative interviews with Nigerian immigrants living in a large city in the United States. This interview approach was appropriate for exploring the views of study participants, the meaning they assign to experiences, important contextual variation, and group experiences (Devers and Frankel, 2000; Esterberg, 2002; Warren and Karner, 2005). Nigerian immigrants living in the United States represent a hard-to-reach population, so time–space sampling techniques were used. This sampling strategy involved collecting data from a specific group of people residing in a particular area (Creswell and Poth, 2016) by forming sampling frames based on the availability of participants at specific venues, days, and times (Semaan, 2010). In previous research, time–space sampling has proven beneficial in collecting data from immigrants (Menjívar and Bejarano, 2004; Wu et al., 2011). The sample was developed with help from leaders at three religious centers with large Nigerian immigrant memberships.

Sampled individuals did not receive any form of compensation in exchange for their participation in the study. The interview questions were open-ended and semi-structured in nature. The interview framework was designed to guide participants through their discussion of issues pertaining to this study. To ensure confidentiality, pseudonyms were used in place of legal names. All of the interviews were recorded. On average, the interviews lasted approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes. The interviews began in October 2020 and continued through January 2021. Prior to the onset of data collection, study protocols were approved by the governing institution’s Institutional Review Board. Interviews were conducted at locations that were selected by participants, usually in their homes. The audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed.

Participants

The sample comprised 17 Nigerian immigrants residing in Sun Valley (pseudonym). Participants resided in various working-class neighborhoods located throughout the city. The mean age of the sample was 33.2 years (ages ranged from 25 to 41 years). With regard to gender, 35.3% were men and 64.7% were women. The breakdown in formal education was as follows: 29.4% high school graduate, 5.9% vocational training, 58.8% bachelor’s degree, and 5.9% master’s degree. At the time of the interviews, a large majority of the sample was employed (82.4%). The number of years that participants had lived in the United States varied, from a minimum of 8 years to a maximum of 18 years (mean = 12.2 years). Finally, the breakdown in terms of religious orientation was 23.5% Islam, 35.3% Christian, 11.8% Traditional African, 17.6% Buddhist, and 11.8% none. Sample characteristics are provided in Table 1.

Table 1.

Sample characteristics.

Respondent	Age	Gender	Occupation	Education	Religion	Years in US
Sapo	35	Male	Nursing home	Bachelor’s	Islam	10
Noko	27	Male	Meat company	High school	Islam	9
Buta	36	Female	Homemaker	Bachelor’s	Christian	12
Praye	41	Female	Bus driver	High school	Traditional	17
Ntoos	38	Female	Homemaker	Bachelor’s	None	15
Enam	25	Female	Fast food restaurant	High school	Christian	8
Toklo	37	Female	Seamstress	Vocational school	Christian	14
Dama	25	Male	Adult development home	Bachelor’s	Christian	8
Edan	32	Male	Teacher	Bachelor’s	Islam	11
Koti	29	Female	Retail store	High school	Traditional	9
Waakye	34	Male	Fashion designer	Bachelor’s	Islam	12
Kwedu	38	Female	Behavioral health	Bachelor’s	Buddhist	18
Momone	35	Male	Homemaker	Bachelor’s	None	14
Amane	27	Female	Retail store	Bachelor’s	Christian	9
Bula	28	Female	Insurance	Master’s	Buddhist	8
Ebro	38	Female	Nursing home	Bachelor’s	Buddhist	16
Ebin	39	Female	Private business	High school	Christian	18

The names of sample members are pseudonyms.

Official statistics detailing the total number of Nigerian immigrants residing in Sun Valley at the time of the study were not available, nor were data regarding the demographic composition of Nigerian immigrants. As such, it was not possible to compare the distribution of various demographic characteristics of the sample against official records to determine how representative the same was. Although the sample is reasonably diverse in terms of gender, age, education, and religion, the extent to which the sample is representative remains an open question. Accordingly, those interested in generalizing the findings from this study to larger Nigerian immigrant populations should exercise caution when doing so.

Data analysis strategy

An inductive thematic analysis approach was used to generate themes during the data analysis, locate patterns and relationships, and present essential meaning that was consistent with respondents’ views. Relevant constructs were coded into themes around which analysis of the data proceeded (Bowen, 2006). Coding was done at two levels: the first level involved approaching the data with an open mind and assigning descriptive codes or labels to all parts of the data with the help of the NVivo 11 software. The second level involved searching for and locating patterns, relationships, dimensions, and contexts (Auerbach and Silverstein, 2003; Saldaña, 2013). The initial coding in the first level used comparison analysis to identify similarities and differences in experiences and contexts (Charmaz, 2014). For the second level, a focused coding approach (Esterberg, 2002) was used that involved a thorough review and reading (multiple times) of the transcripts with a primary focus on the themes and constructs identified in the initial coding stage. These exercises, together with memo writing, revealed relevant texts that support the various codes and produce contextual meanings (Creswell, 2015), and significantly inform the study’s findings.

Findings

Imagining police–citizen encounters

Reisig and Lloyd (2009) argued that people often imagine how police encounters will unfold and how the police will treat them before they actually experience such interactions. This study throws more light on this process. Participants were asked what they imagined police–citizen encounters would be like before they had any contact with the Sun Valley police. Momone said that he envisioned typical person-to-person relations, the kind of interactions that occur in everyday life. He explained that the Nigerian police are corrupt and “America is the land of freedom and human rights, I thought that situations with the police would be calm. Like the police would talk to me with some respect, do not shut me up but allow me to talk, like a normal one-on-one conversation. After all, we are all humans.” In short, he imagined police encounters that were consistent with the idyllic principles of the United States. Inferring from this, Momone expected procedurally-fair encounters with the police. Indeed, he mentioned elements of procedural justice, including “respect” and “allow me to talk” (i.e. voice). Similar points were also expressed by 14 other respondents.

Past police encounters in immigrants’ home countries likely influence how they imagine future encounters with the police in the United States will unfold (Davis et al., 2003; Pryce, 2014). Momone said the Nigerian police are “corrupt.” Nevertheless, he was optimistic that the Sun Valley police would be different. Momone argued that before they enforce laws, the police ought to recognize his status as a human being who deserves respect.

Buta referenced the mission of the police (i.e. to protect and serve) when imagining police–citizen encounters. She said that her mental image of such interactions hinged on the “goal of the police” in any given situation. Almost all of the respondents echoed this sentiment. Buta explained:

Police organizations have service and protection as their core mission. So, to serve and protect me, you have to serve in honesty. So, I imagine police-citizen encounters to be a fair interaction; police should have an impartial mind. It ought to be very calm, no yelling. I feel like I should be able to trust the police enough that when I speak, my views will be considered, that he or she will not order me to put my hands behind me only to kill me.

Buta explained that the police mission can be accomplished through “honesty.” By this, she argued, the police ought to interact with citizens with respect and without prejudice. However, Buta’s image of police–citizen encounters involved the police listening to citizens and using their authority to protect citizens. Undesired outcomes, such as unlawful shootings, are clearly not part of Buta’s image. Given that trust in police motives, voice, honesty, and fairness were well represented in the qualitative interview data, it is clear that the African-immigrant participants imagined police encounters in the United States to be procedurally just.

Throughout the interviews, several participants shared vicarious experiences with police via social media. Noko recounted,

I had all these beautiful ideas about police-citizen situation, but I saw things differently when I joined Twitter and Facebook. I will watch the news and see police mistreating people in the USA and stuff, and they were a wake-up call for me. I now imagined police-citizen encounters to be unpredictable, you cannot really tell the end.

The role of the media in perception formation has been investigated by policing researchers (Surette, 2014; Weitzer, 2002), and it appeared to adversely impact participants’ expectations. Noko’s social media and news consumption led him to believe that police–citizen encounters in the United States are often volatile. Ntoos made a similar point. She originally imagined calm police–citizen encounters characterized by respect and fairness, but the video clips she viewed online gave her the sense that police encounters can be unpredictable. As Ntoos put it: “I saw videos of police mistreating citizens on social media, and I started to think back on what I had thought earlier. I was nervous in a way imagining if that was me. I think anything can happen.”

In sum, prior to leaving their homeland, participants largely imagined police in the United States to be procedurally fair, an image that is significantly different from how they view the Nigerian police. These positive images of the police appeared to be rooted in an idealized image of the United States as a global guarantor of human rights and legal protections. However, vicarious instances of procedural injustice via online videos made participants less optimistic about how the police would ultimately treat them once they took up residence in Sun Valley.

Immigrants’ experiences with the police

Despite the fair and just treatment imagined by sample members, most of the participants described personal interactions with the Sun Valley police that fell considerably short of their expectations. Ebin shared one such experience: “they walk up to you, tell you what they think you have done, and expect that you accept their allegations. If you challenge them or seek further explanation, you automatically become an enemy.” According to Ebin, the process is unfair because the views of African immigrants are largely unwelcomed by the police. Instead, the police use their authority to control immigrants.

In another account, Amane described how her neighbor called the police to report a dispute the two were having:

I was home, and the police came to arrest me without asking my side until later. I feel like, before they come and even talk to you, they have already made their decision. What you will say does not matter to them. They pretend to listen, but, in the end, it is what they think and know about you or any group they fit you in.

When asked what she thought informed the police officer’s decision to arrest her, she said it was her neighbor’s description of her. Amane explained that her neighbor “said things like I am an immigrant and aggressive.” She continued, “[i]f the police have some hate for immigrants, do you think they will be fair to me? No.” The experiences described by both Ebin and Amane indicate that the unfair treatment they received from the police signaled to them that they were not valued members of the dominant group, but rather outgroup members whose every word should be viewed with skepticism.

Edan discussed a police encounter that took place 6 months prior to the interview that helps clarify how many Nigerian immigrants felt about the negative treatment they received by the Sun Valley police. During his police encounter, Edan produced documents that proved his legal immigration status. Edan recounted,

The officer condescendingly looked at me when I showed him my green card and papers and [I] asked to be talked to with respect and a little dignity as a human. He was like, “I do not care, you are still a migrant, and what you hold does not mean you are American. You are first a migrant.” I was shocked and sad.

Similar to the others, Edan felt that the poor treatment he received was triggered by his migrant status. Such a conclusion was shared by 15 participants.

These accounts show that actual police encounters did not measure up to how participants initially imagined interactions with the Sun Valley police would unfold. What is more, unfair police treatment was largely interpreted by participants as evidence that they were not valued members of the group the police represent. Rather, in the eyes of the police they were “migrants” whose testimony must be questioned, who were viewed as a threat to public order, and who were believed to be in need of higher levels of social control. Existing theory and research indicates that police procedural injustice—like the treatment described by participants—adversely affects how legitimate the police are perceived to be, which in turn will alter the motivations and levels of compliance and cooperation with the police.

Fear of the police and compliance

Existing research demonstrates that individuals who perceive the police as legitimate are much more likely comply with police directives during encounters (see, for example, Tyler and Huo, 2002) and comply with the law over the long run (see, for example, Reisig et al., 2007). The willingness to comply with police directions, obey the law, and the factors that undergird these tendencies among sample members were investigated. The following responses carried the main themes worthy of analysis and were widely expressed by participants.

Toklo reported that two factors—life preservation and avoiding arrest—drive her decisions to obey police instructions during encounters. She stated, “I choose to obey the police because I do not want to die. I am black, and all the black people who were shot and killed by the police started by just one disobedience or challenge, just one.” Similarly, Kwedu reported similar feeling the first time she encountered the Sun Valley police. She explained: “He was nice. But that does not mean I obeyed his orders because of how nice he was. He could change anytime, and I could be killed.” In both Toklo and Kwedu’s cases, then, immediate compliance was not a product of police legitimacy, but rather a conscious attempt to avoid the potentially harmful consequences of challenging police authority. Such factors are often referred to as “dull compulsion” (Carrabine, 2004), where individuals “obey the police because of fear, a sense of powerlessness, or pragmatic acquiescence” (Akinlabi and Murphy, 2018; Tankebe, 2013: 106).

Participants were also queried about their willingness to obey the law. The evidence that dull compulsion motivates compliance with the law is also apparent. For example, Dama said he tries his best not to break the law. Among his gravest fears include having to deal with a police officer he does not know, a fear that grounds his conviction that the police cannot be trusted to act in a nonprejudicial manner. Dama explained,

For all my life here, I have obeyed and will obey the rules in this country and police instructions. I fear that either I am killed in a way or deported or made to suffer. I do not think it is because one police, sheriff, or lawyer was just to and respected me. No. I obey to protect my life and the opportunities I have been blessed with here.

In short, Dama’s comments indicate that he follows the law to avoid police contact. Similar to Toklo and Kwedu, he also fears for his personal safety, which would motivate him to comply with police orders. Thus far, the participants’ comments indicate that their motivations to obey the law and follow police directives were nonnormative in nature.

The expectation of fair and respectful treatment by the police is thought to be embraced universally (see Tyler, 1988). Negative treatment by the police can reduce the extent to which individuals identify with the police and reduce how legitimate they believe the police are. This does not mean that individuals who question police legitimacy will ignore police requests and break the law. Indeed, many of the participants in this study stated that they strive to obey laws and follow police directions. Importantly, the motivation for doing so among participants is based on fear and self-preservation—not trust in the police, not because participants have similar values as the police, and not because they believe that they have a moral obligation to follow police dictates because it is the right thing to do. Put simply, the motivations undergirding compliance among participants are inconsistent with process-based policing and reflect a calculated course of action based on a fear of police violence.

Reasons for (not) calling the police

Reducing crime is a collective effort involving the police and community members (Boateng, 2018a; Sampson et al., 1997). The police rely on area residents to notify them of suspicious behavior and criminal victimization. Research shows that immigrants are less likely to contact police to report a crime when compared with native-born citizens (see Herbst and Walker, 2001; Menjívar and Bejarano, 2004). Much like compliance, the process-based model of policing holds that calling the police and other forms of cooperation (e.g. providing eyewitness testimony) are tied to variations in police legitimacy. Having noted that participants question the legitimacy of the Sun Valley police, one would expect that other factors also motivated decisions whether to make police contact.

A number of nonnormative factors influenced whether participants said they would call the police. Fear of retaliation was one such factor. Praye said whether an alleged criminal was gang affiliated would play a role in her decision to call the police. She commented, “This place is scary. You might think you are reporting a crime to help the victim, but you will end up being a target for gangs . . . and you will end being searched and killed.” Although stereotypical on Praye’s part, there is no doubt that gang-related violence is prevalent in many urban disadvantaged communities (Alonso, 2004). She has developed a reluctance for reporting crimes involving individuals she believes are gang members because it can result in becoming a victim of retaliation.

Existing research ranks the seriousness of a crime as an important factor in deciding to contact the police (Xie and Baumer, 2019). Participants were asked whether the seriousness of a crime mattered in their decisions to call the police. Here, the term serious was defined as death-causing or assaults that caused bodily injury. Participants alluded that the seriousness of crime mattered in the presence of other factors. They viewed decisions to report serious crime in the context of individually held beliefs and morals about the value of life and whether the crime involved acquaintances. Ebro said she would not watch while someone she knew died of an attack. She went on to say that “if I do that, God will punish me, my blessings will be blocked. One day I might also need similar help from someone, and I will not get it.” According to Ebro, the seriousness of the crime matters less than avoiding spiritual repercussions of inaction. Ebro’s reasoning is not too surprising. Research shows that many African immigrants carry their religious beliefs with them from their homeland (Olupona and Gemignani, 2009). In a similar gesture, Koti said life-threatening crimes against her colleagues or friends would be reported. This decision to report serious crimes involving acquaintances was driven by the perceived moral meanings of life-saving interventions. Koti said her religious beliefs are such that she must help save another’s life or she will face spiritual repercussions. Petty crimes committed by immigrants lack similar power to drive police contacts. Enam explained why one does not report petty crimes committed by immigrants:

The person might be the breadwinner of their family back home, then because of a petty thing, I will report them, then they get deported. I cannot live knowing I have caused someone and their family’s downfall. So, except it is a serious crime that can kill or cause danger or harm, I will just pass and go my way.

Another known factor that threatens police contact is immigration status (Davis et al., 1998). Some of the participants reported that the fear of deportation influences their decision to not call the police. However, the analyses uncovered another layer to the ongoing discussion on undocumented immigrant—police contact nexus. Specifically, participants were asked whether they would contact police in a situation involving a criminal or victim whom they knew to be undocumented. Sapo said reporting an undocumented immigrant criminal is good for the entire immigrant community. He explained,

The mindset of most Americans is that we are criminals or bad guys, so I will chook [snitch] the person whether he is legal or not to someone who will call the police for me. Those people are part of the reasons why we, the good ones, suffer. You are an immigrant, and you commit a serious crime like abusing someone or even killing someone. You should face the law and be deported.

Sharing a similar view, Ntoos argued that immigrants should “think twice before committing a crime, because you know you will be punished and deported afterward.” Ntoos conceived police contact in this context as a venture that has positive implications in the long run for the entire immigrant community. Bula added that crimes that are not serious should not receive equal impetus, even if they involved undocumented immigrants. She argued,

If I see her [undocumented immigrant] doing something like smoking [an illegal substance] or any crime that is not serious, I will mind my business and walk. I would have spared that person deportation. It is just life or death crimes that I will report . . .

To summarize, fear of retaliation, seriousness of the crime, and fear of deportation help explain the willingness (or lack thereof) among the African immigrants in this study to call the police to report crime. The influence of seriousness is consistent with available research conducted using a variety of samples. When it comes to fear—both in terms of criminal retaliation and deportation as punishment—the findings indicate that participants do not trust the Sun Valley police to protect them from the retaliatory acts of gang members, nor do they trust the police to not accuse them of committing a crime and deport them because it is the most expedient option. Some participants viewed deportation as a valuable tool that could help rid the immigrant community of individuals who engage in serious crime, which they believed hurt the public image of immigrants in Sun Valley.

Discussion

When practiced effectively, the strategy of process-based policing is said to help build meaningful relationships between the police and area residents (Tyler and Huo, 2002). Immigrants are no exception. One of the potential challenges associated with establishing strong police relationships in immigrant communities is the belief that they sometimes import negative views of the police from their home country, which in turn influences how they view the police in the United States (Davies and Fagan, 2012; Pryce, 2014). The participants in this study did not appear do this. Rather, many participants talked about the perceived ideals of the United States—protecting human rights—which they identified with and expressed optimism that the police in Sun Valley would embody. Vicarious experiences from watching online videos showing instances of police brutality appeared to temper their expectations. Nevertheless, participants anticipated fair treatment by the police and good relations with them upon their arrival. In sum, the findings from the interviews support the conclusion that the participants in the sample came to the United States anticipating mutually respectful relations with the Sun Valley police, but what they experienced was by all accounts something different.

Participants reported that their relations with the Sun Valley police were unsatisfactory. They were often the recipients of procedural unfairness. Their descriptions of poor police treatment, which included disrespectful behavior and denial of voice during encounters, signaled to participants that they were not valued group members. This type of behavior was described by Edan—a teacher by profession—who upon producing documents establishing his immigration status was told by a Sun Valley police officer that “what you hold does not mean you are American. You are first a migrant.” Many participants described negative attributes assigned to the migrant status by the police, including being untrustworthy, disorderly behavior, and requiring more police control. Similar accounts have been reported among immigrants in other Western nations (Bradford et al., 2017; Weber, 2013). Two inferences seem apparent. First, participants resoundingly rejected the negative characterization of the migrant status by the police. Second, unfair characterizations by the police adversely affected how legitimate participants perceived the Sun Valley police to be. These low levels of support certainly appeared to demotivate compliance and cooperation among sample members.

Given the deficiencies in perceived police legitimacy among participants, their decisions to comply and cooperate appeared to be motivated more by nonnormative factors, such as the fear of retaliation and fear of deportation. The seriousness of the criminal offense was also a deciding factor to mobilize the police for some participants. All three of these factors have been found to influence calling the police in previous research (see, for example, Menjívar and Bejarano, 2004; Reina et al., 2014; Xie and Baumer, 2019). Regarding fear-based reasons for not calling the police, it is fair to ask whether higher levels of police legitimacy could sufficiently motivate individuals to set aside their self-interest and report criminal incidence and related behaviors. Relatedly, it is also reasonable to question whether high levels of police legitimacy could compel individuals to report fellow immigrants for relatively minor offenses, which many participants were disinclined to do because they feared doing so would result in their neighbor’s deportation. At a minimum, taking these factors into consideration serves as a reminder that there are many challenges associated with establishing strong police–immigrant relations and that process-based policing is by no means a panacea for police reform.

One of the most unexpected findings from the study was participants’ continued interest in procedural justice. According to social identity theory, fair and just treatment signals to residents that they are valued in-group members, whereas poor treatment is indication that the police view recipients as less favorable (i.e. as outgroup members) (Tyler and Blader, 2003). In such situations, one might expect that immigrants would express low levels of interest in procedural justice because of their differences with the police and focus instead on instrumental concerns (e.g. police effectiveness and distributive fairness). As was noted, previous researchers have made similar conclusions (Tankebe, 2009). However, that did not appear to be the case in this study. Instead, immigrants expressed strong interest in procedural justice during police encounters. This preference may be in part due to the identity-relevant information. Put simply, procedurally-just treatment is crucial for immigrants who aspire to integrate into American society (to become part of the in-group), a country they perhaps naively imagined as a global exemplar in the protection of human rights and leader in the provision of legal protections. Due to these concerns, many immigrants want to identify with the police.

Although it is likely that process-based policing and the use of procedurally-just tactics could prove effective in promoting fruitful relationships between police and community members (Weisburd et al., 2022; Wood et al., 2020), it is worth noting that such benefits will take time to realize. Others have noted similar concerns. For example, Reisig et al. (2021) cautioned that “it might prove unrealistic to expect in-service training curricula focused on the application of procedural justice principles during public encounters to produce immediate positive results” (p. 1310). Many procedurally-just tactics, such as being outwardly polite and taking time to listen to people, are discretionary behaviors for the police, but they are crucial to cultivating relationships (see Tyler and Blader, 2003). Put differently, to effectively build meaningful police-community relationships, fairness in discretionary behaviors among the police must be prioritized, which subsequently should serve as a precursor to voluntary cooperative behaviors among groups. In contrast to the treatment participants reportedly received from the Sun Valley police, practices and tactics consistent with the principles of procedural justice will send signals of acceptance to immigrants, promote trust in and support for the police, and reduce fear over time.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Dennis Sarpong

Author biographies

Dennis Sarpong is a doctoral student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. His research interests include legal socialization of immigrants, policing, and criminological theory testing.

Michael D Reisig is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. His interests include social control (formal and informal), crime and victimization, and legal socialization. His recent publications appear in Journal of Experimental Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Law and Human Behavior.

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